Just incase you were starting to take yourself too seriously...

The kind folks over at The Huge Entity have compiled a series of short essays entitled "Reasons Why 'You' Don't Exist."

My personal favorite, "As 'You' Like It."

Absolutely brilliant!

Finished!

Today I put the final touches on Grace for Fools. It such a relief to be done. I've been dreading the ending rewrite all week. Nothing but to get through it I suppose. I'm still feeling the end might be a bit weak. I've been fussing with the foreshadowing so much I can't tell if I'm writing well enough into the ending or not.
I need to take a break and look at it again later but I'm thinking it might be time to move it beyond into a new set of eyes. At least for a sanity check. Mine, mostly.

Still, feels good to be done. AHHHHH....

I got this crazy idea that I might actually start rewriting my novel. Sooner rather than later. It occurs to me that I might really need to scrap it and start over -- you know: read the thing once, toss it and start writing all over again. Trying to hang on to bits and pieces is just too hard for me right now. I wind up getting tangled up in the same mess I did on the first draft. The funny part is I'm almost terrified at the thought. I remember how consuming it was -- daunting -- living with the plot and characters constantly in my head for the better part of a year. Back to the days and nights of dropping whatever I'm doing because I just have to jot down a sentence (or paragraph or pages) that come to me when they come to me. Plus I already have a relationship with this story and these characters. It would almost be easier to start over with a new set of people and a new story.

Easy, yes? But where's the fun in easy?

Woohoo! I'm international!

I now have regular visitors from Canada, Italy, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. WOW! Thanks for stopping by!

(This is the first time I've checked stats in weeks, is it THAT obvious?)

You found out about me HOW?!

Keyword searches that lead to this page over the last week:

"mosco sex girl"
"domanatrix and submission"

I'm not kidding. Did I miss something? And here I was thinking this was just a silly blog about writing.

Coincidence? I think not...

A little gem for the day that arrived in my mailbox this morning:

This year, both Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address fell in the same week. As Air America Radio pointed out -"It is an ironic juxtaposition: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involves a groundhog."

Current Story Drama

So I'm currently picking the bones out of one of my CW stories, some of you might affectionately remember by my less than clever working title "Horseboy" (Hey, all I can say is that it was due by 9 am and I was titleless at 8:45) What I really liked about the story is the strength of the voice of the main character, Jack. I knew immediately who he was and what he was about, what moved him and what terrified him. The only thing I didn't know is what he would do with the choice I gave him at the end.

In the working draft I had three endings. Two that ranged from happily ever after to Disney cartoon and the last that was like Shakespeare tragedy at it's best (think Titus) Needless to say at 5 weeks into CW and emotionally overworked I went with the last. I also second guessed myself and totally fucked the beginning over instead of going with my gut.

The funny part was, the worst crit I got was that the manuscript was a mess. (It was) And that the beginning was bungled. (It was) People liked the ending or didn't like the ending but nobody said "NO WAY I didn't believe that for as long as it took to wipe my ass with the last page of your 'script." Or anything along those lines. And pretty much everybody liked the story overall.

All good things. So six months later I take a crack at this misshapen child o mine and the muse is smiling as she's sitting on her ass getting her third pedicure for the week and I toil away religiously at my laptop. I discover that there are so many good things I left out, sharpened it up a bit, tweaked the beginning. Then I get to the end and it's like hitting a brick wall.

Suddenly I find myself longing for ending # 1 or 2. I mean I LOVE this kid. Why would I ever him? And then it hits me. This is my biggest challenge as a writer. Making the bad things happen, especially to the ones I really like. So I am struggling, hemming and hawing now because I know when I sit down to this story I am going to have to do something really bad to someone really nice. Not because he asked for it, or he deserved it. But because sometimes that's just the way life is.

The best part is, he will be a stronger person because of it. Life goes on. Funny how those things work out.